


Fruits for Funeral Parlors

by kototyph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Government Conspiracy, Human Experimentation, Kidnapping, M/M, Mystery, Other tags to be added, Rescue Missions, Substance Abuse, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel, a psionic who'd do anything to avoid attention from the police, realizes his disturbing dreams are visions of an actual kidnapping when he sees the victim's brother pleading for information on the morning news. His conscience won't allow him to stay quiet, so he leaves what he thinks is an anonymous tip with the NYPD. He has, however, greatly underestimated Dean Winchester's determination to save Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fruits for Funeral Parlors

**Author's Note:**

> This was a [Dean/Castiel Big Bang](http://deancasbigbang.livejournal.com/) attempt that became a [NaNoWriMo](http://nanowrimo.org/) attempt, and now it's going to be a serial attempt. \o/ All Hail Me, Hopeful Finisher of Things

_Shower, food, sleep_ (beat). _Shower, food, sleep_ (beat). _Shower, food—_ his foot hits an icy patch on the sidewalk, and it throws off Castiel’s inner count as he stumbles and at least three people knock into him, pushing him further off-balance.

“Watch it, asshole,” someone mutters as they shoulder past him, a burgundy splash of annoyance. Castiel flinches but doesn’t look up, just rights himself and keeps moving. The crowd bears him out of the subway entrance and into the street beyond, and soon his feet are hitting the ground with the same measured pace as before. _Shower, food, sleep_ (beat). _Shower, food, sleep_ (beat).

By the time he reaches his apartment building, face and fingers smarting in the cold, he’s reconsidered the order. He unlocks the front door while trying not to touch the metal, and steps inside to the beat of _food, shower, sleep_ (beat). Hunger is a hook in his belly, drawn tight and sore under his sternum.

Someone has broken into the mailboxes again. Castiel’s eyes are still on his feet, so he only notices because brightly-colored advertisements for pizza parlors and roof repair are scattered across the threadbare carpet leading to the stairs, the cardstock and gray paper already warped by slush and the grimy black bootprints of other tenants. He pauses with his foot on the first step, gaze slowly lifting to the hollow metal boxes that line the alcove to the right of the front door. The front panel, the one that holds all the little doors, is hanging open at a drunken angle. The scene has a tang of boredom rather than violence.

He supposes he’d be annoyed, if he ever got mail. He crosses the foyer, and the flyers make a rustling underfoot like fallen leaves. There are so many of them, and they’re all the same; he could almost pretend they fell off some kind of commercialized tree, blown out of an ad agency in uptown and collected here by a warm autumn wind.

Behind him, the door to the street rattles in a passing gust, nothing warm or autumnal about it. The high moaning it makes through the cracks is eerie in the otherwise silent space, and the sound propels Castiel up the rest of the steps, to the landing and the dimly-lit hallway beyond.

The elevator hangs dark and silent in its cage like something sleeping, and rather than disturb it Castiel takes the stairs that run around it in regimented rises. There’s a faint smell of mildew no matter no matter where he is in the building, but it lessens as he keeps a steady, flat-footed trudge up each flight.

He circles the shaft four times before he reaches the fifth floor and his door, the handles of plastic bags digging into the tender insides of his first and second knuckles. One keys opens the deadbolt, another the knob lock, and a shove unsticks the door from the frame. The fit’s grown tight from years and years of thick latex paint, geologic layers of it rubbing off at the friction points.

The apartment is chilly, lit in dim blue by the neon signs across the street. Castiel hits the switch and the overhead light flickers, flickers… decides to come on. It seems to take longer each time.

There are a series of trash bags in a row against the wall, ever-ready for a trip down to the dumpster. He sets the bags he’s carrying next to them and an untidy pile of shoes, nudging the door closed with his heel. He throws both locks and sets the chain as a matter of habit, his fingers aching, striped pink and white from the weight of his purchases.

The radiator gives a single brief wheeze against the main room’s far wall, drawing his attention from the locks. Castiel goes to cross the room and lay his hands on it, to see if the heat’s finally been fixed the way the landlord has been claiming it will be, but he only makes it halfway there. In skirting the coffee table crowded with dirty dishes and empty bottles, the backs of his knees make contact with the thin cushions. Then his legs. Then his back and head and shoulder as his entire body seems to exhale one huge, exhausted breath, and suddenly he’s prone on the couch without intending to go anywhere near it.

Muscles in his back twinge, then go blissfully limp. He forces himself to toe off his wet sneakers, and he tucks his damp socks into the crease between the couch’s arm and back cushions. His hands he tucks under his chest, his chin deeper into his scarf. Mm. Not warm, but better.

On the other side of the coffee table, the blank, dusty screen of the television sits on an ancient chest of drawers, half-hidden among discarded clothing, jumbled newspapers and books with water-warped pages. The remote is just out of reach when he extends his arm, but a few pathetic pushes and he manages to hit the power button with a finger, knocking the remote off the table in the process.

_“— like to draw your attention to this line of weather here, which will likely mean some snow from tomorrow into Friday. It should be fairly light and taper off towards ten in the morning, but the real story is in these temperatures. It’s going to be a cold weekend, folks— make sure you bundle up.”_

The flurry of words is soft and meaningless, but it disrupts the heavy pall of silence that had filled the apartment previously. Castiel relaxes into the couch that fraction more, breath collecting warm and humid under scratchy wool. Food, shower, sleep. His stomach grumbles unhappily, and in just a moment, he’s going to shrug off his coat, change his pants for some that don’t have salt-stains etching up and down the legs and go to the kitchen.

He’ll be up in just a second.

Just, a little bit longer.

* * *

empty, awful  
white.

blinding, bleaching. searing with no heat. the utter absence of  
darkness, even shadows is  
disturbing.

there is a floor and a ceiling,  
white,  
white.

there is a bed and a blanket.  
white.

there is a man on the bed, and his face is  
white,  
his eyes are  
white

where they roll back into his head as he strains against the straps  
(white)

that pin him to the mattress. there is something wedged into his mouth that’s holding back the worst of the screaming, but it’s still audible from behind his  
white  
teeth: hoarse and  
weak and  
totally insensate.

eventually, the man stops.

stops screaming, stops struggling, stops fighting at all. shudders rack his body at uneven intervals, until those, too,  
stop. 

eventually, another person comes into the room, and their long coat is  
white.

their hands are quick and clinical as they expose the crook of his arm for a needle. gloved fingers pry at his jaw and tug the  
gag from his mouth.

“What did you see?” they ask the man on the bed. 

“Please,” he whispers, staring past them. the blood dripping from his nose is shockingly  
red. 

“What did you see?” they insist. 

“Help me, please,” he says, staring at— 

_Please help,_

_please help_

_me,_

_please._

* * *

It’s several long minutes before he becomes aware of much more than the ache in his hip, the feeling of rough carpet abrading his forehead and forearms. He twitches his fingers, gone to pins-and-needles while he slept, but doesn’t open his eyes.

Opening his eyes would mean acknowledging consciousness. Consciousness means memory, and realization; it means inevitable crushing disappointment. Here in the dark, with a splitting headache and the wet catch of nausea in his throat, at least he has a chance of slipping back under before—

“Ugh,” he says out loud. Too late.

He is inescapably Castiel once more, currently possessed of both cold toes and a desperate need to put something in his stomach before he throws up bile. He has a double shift at the gas station down the street tonight, and an appointment with administration psychiatrists this afternoon. That is, if he hasn’t slept through it.

“Ugh,” he says again, because he can’t afford to miss this one, and begins the slow, painful process of maneuvering into an upright position.

It isn’t easy. He’s somehow rolled himself into the narrow space between battered couch and beaten coffee table. He plants a hand on the sagging cushions and carefully pushes himself to his knees, battling a cresting wave of queasiness about halfway there, and looks down to see a tub of rancid chip dip next to his hand. The television remote sticks out of it, listing like the Titanic going down in icy waters.

 _“Ugh,”_ Castiel comments raggedly.

Weak sunlight now marbles the room in shades of gray, and Castiel winces away from even that on his way to the kitchen. He trips over a plastic bag filled with—something, and almost brains himself on a cabinet, palm smarting from the impact as he catches himself.

He makes it to the refrigerator, where a half-gallon of milk sits catty-corner from an empty, open pizza box. He twists off the top and drinks directly out of the jug, winces, and spits into the sink. He's more careful with carton of orange juice the next shelf over.

He leans on the open door of the refrigerator and drinks, liquid just cold enough that it washes down his throat without tasting like much of anything. The kitchen itself is cold, the smaller radiator under the window no match for the grim November day outside, and he shivers, closing the fridge hurriedly.

Through the open arch to the living space, the television is still on from last night. It’s gone to local news, and Castiel squints to read the ribbon scrolling past the prominent logo at the bottom of the screen. There are track outages on the Eighth Avenue lines, apparently, and an arson case in Brooklyn. The screen flashes to shaky footage of ambulances and EMTs crowded around a gurney, then back to the solemn newsanchor, who smiles sadly at Castiel before turning to discuss the scene with her colleague.

The little clock next to the logo says 10:01AM, so Castiel finishes the orange juice at a leisurely pace and stoops to set the drained carton next to the overflowing garbage can. He walks back into the living room and leans over the couch, ignoring the sour twist in his stomach, and pulls the remote out of the dip with a disgusting gloppy pop. His finger finds the (thankfully) clean volume control and bumps it up.

“— _chance of pyrokinetic abilities, as you can see clearly in this eyewitness video—“_

On the screen, a building catches fire with impressive speed. Castiel watches it billow and flare for a moment, then drops the remote on the table, moving around the couch towards the bathroom. The newsanchor’s voice follows him through the door, saying, “ _The police have declined to comment on the suspect’s possible metahuman status, but members of the MLE were seen entering the building just before the fire started. Back to you, Diana.”_

_“Thank you, Melvin. We have a special guest here today to talk about New York’s recent spike in metahuman crime, and what it could mean for Proposition 6. Dr. Richard—“_

The sound of the shower sputtering to life drowns out the broadcast, and Castiel makes the most of his five minutes of hot water by soaping up without it, then running it high enough to scald. He slumps against the cloudy glass wall, letting it drill into the tense muscles at the base of his skull, and only gets out when it’s run down from boiling to tepid to glacial.

He dries off quickly, shivering under the rough terrycloth (needs a wash, but then, what doesn’t), and brushes his teeth. At the tall peak of the bathroom ceiling, the bulb flickers. Something about the way the colorless fluorescent moves over his face in the mirror reminds him of

a plea and a  
white,  
white,  
room

and Castiel shudders, ducking his head to spit into the sink.

He’s had that dream before. Not in a few weeks; not since he last was off dampeners. The nightmares are one of the reasons he takes them, and in comparison to some of the things he’s seen while coming down and vulnerable, the white room is almost pleasant. Almost.

He had some Psyclerix stashed away, but it’s long gone now, and it was street grade to begin with— cut with fillers and re-pressed into anonymous little pills that are easier to sell out of coat pockets and handbags. Castiel pays a teenage dealer in the East Village for a few dozen at a time and saves them for when when his administration-supplied prescription runs out. This month has been a bad one. He’d emptied his prescription bottle a week ago, and finished the last of the Psyclerix a bare handful of days later. There are more effective ways to manage supression, but nothing Castiel can afford in the literal or figurative sense. He takes his government subsidies where he can.

He goes to the wardrobe, relic of some previous tenant that was too big to bother moving, and he’s sorting through the clothing wadded up at the bottom when dramatic music signals the start of another news segment. He glances over his shoulder at the television as he pulls a shirt over his head.

 _“Where is Sam Winchester?”_ the anchor asks with earnest solemnity. _“The young lawyer went missing nearly two months ago under circumstances that have police baffled and his family searching for answers. In an interesting twist, the police and his family are in this case one and the same. Detective Dean Winchester held another press conference earlier today to plead for any information leading to the safe return of his brother.”_

The video cuts to a shot of concrete steps and empty podium, a reporter in the foreground trying to hold her coat closed against the whipping wind. Castiel considers her, and reaches for a bulky cableknit sweater crammed into the wardrobe’s middle shelf.

 _“Nancy Fitzgerald has more on the story. Nancy, has the NYPD made_ any _headway on Sam’s disappearance?”_

Nancy clutches her collar tighter and gives the camera a serious stare. _“That really is the question, Diana. Confidential informants have told us that the lack of physical evidence and credible witnesses has stalled the case completely.”_

_“Do the police have any suspects?”_

_“Close friends of the victim deny he had any enemies, but he was a public prosecutor— we have to consider the possibility that a defendant with a grudge may have had something to do with it.”_

The anchor nods. _“Thank you, Nancy. Sam’s family is offering a reward for information leading to his safe return.”_

The screen fills with a hotline number and a photo of a man with a lopsided grin and deep dimples, eyes a bright hazel in the flash from the camera.

_“Please call the number on your screen to be connected to the New York Police Department.”_

“Oh," Castiel breathes, sweater caught around his neck, staring at the screen.

_“You can also leave an anonymous tip with the New York Crimestoppers at 1-866-313-TIPS.”_

“Damn,” he says helplessly, and the man from the white room keeps smiling over the memory of him screaming, eyes glazed with pain and fatigue.

**Author's Note:**

> I need more fandom friends! Find me on [tumblr](http://kototyph.tumblr.com/).
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> Title from an English translation of Belgian poet Francois Jacqmin's collection of dizains, _Le Livre de la Neige_. Pic below from an adaptation thereof, [The City in Winter](http://peterlucas.net/galleries-4/the-city-in-winter-3/) by photographer Peter Lucas
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